The Hollywood Reporter has a new interview with Sony Pictures Tom Rothman talking about director Sam Mendes' plan to make a biodoc each for all four the Beatles, with the films set for release in 2027:
“You have to match the boldness of the idea with a bold release strategy,” Rothman tells The Hollywood Reporter about the project that earned the Oscar-winning director a coveted sign-off from the group’s selective label Apple Corps. “There hasn’t been an enterprise like this before, and you can’t think about it in traditional releasing terms.”
Sony hopes the films, which don’t yet have writers on board, will begin shooting in the U.K. in mid-2025 to make the planned 2027 release for all four titles, with the studio expecting to shoot them together. The studio won’t have a sense of the films’ budget until scripts are written, but this is likely a large-scale undertaking, given that there are four separate period films, and Mendes was aligned with Sony on theatrical being essential for the project.
...Author Bob Spitz says that The Beatles, his best-selling 2005 nonfiction book, has been optioned six times but has not made it to screen, adding that his team is connecting with the filmmakers in the hope that his copious interviews will inform the scripts. “Everybody has heard the legend of the Beatles, but their individual life stories are powerful and little-known,” says Spitz. “Sam’s idea is a great project, and I wish I had thought of it.”
Attorney James Sammataro — a partner at Pryor Cashman, which represents labels including Sony Music — refers to The Beatles and Michael Jackson as “the two Holy Grails of music biopics” because of their elusiveness and the expense of music rights involved for filmmakers. Lionsgate’s Jackson film Michael, starring the superstar’s nephew Jaafar Jackson, comes out next year. (Sony Music acquired rights to most Beatles songs from Jackson’s estate in 2016.) “Historically for artists, there wasn’t a lot of upside in biopics,” Sammataro says, referring to the movies’ impact on song sales. “The more recent move toward biopics is ancillary to an overall changing viewpoint about monetizing music, which is: The more exposure, the better.”
...While The Beatles, as the biggest-selling music act of all time, per the RIAA, have legions of devoted fans, motivating today’s audiences to leave the couch for four interconnected films of any type could be a tough task.
Still, an exhibition source suggests such films are better suited for streaming and compares the all-in gamble to Kevin Costner’s Horizon saga, with Warner Bros. intending to release the first two Western films theatrically this year before following with two more. Says the individual about the plan for a quartet of Beatles movies: “It’s an audacious play for a subset of fans.”
But Rothman believes big swings are what the industry needs to help get its feet back on the ground. “Much of what we struggle with in our business right now is familiarity,” he says. “How often do you get an approach that is entirely original?”
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